Researchers have discovered that an unknown attacker hijacked the update mechanism employed by Ask Partner Network (APN) to download suspicious code onto unsuspecting users’ PCs.
David Bisson reports.
Attackers who were trying to turn the Ask.com Toolbar into a malware dispensary got caught early on when their scheme was picked up by security services that were looking for anomalies.
The malicious actors are unknown but they managed to get the legitimate Ask.com toolbar update feature to place a dropper/uploader into the browsers of several customers of security firm Red Canary.
Once installed, the dropper would bring in secondary malware including banking Trojans and other online-fraud code, says Keith McCammon, CSO of Red Canary. The secondary payloads varied, and some of the dozen or so compromised machines his team found had downloaded more than one kind, he says.
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I removed Security Toolbar with Pest Patrol. Everything else from the virus is removed but the icon on the task bar still occasionally says that System Alert! my computer is infected with spyware .
Anybody know a free way to remove this last piece of the virus?
Thanks
It keeps popping up it’s a red red x looks like something in my firewall settings or something anyway I also keep getting pop ups advertising COMPUTER debugging software that I ain’t paying for can anybody help me or assist me on how to remove this problem?